[4] The work is thought to be the first painting to present horses coming directly toward the viewer, and it uses various techniques to reduce the sense of depth.

Napoleon III, who would begin his reign in 1842 and strongly influence the nation, also grew up in Britain and brought home an interest in horse racing.

[5] As Napoleon III was considering plans for the Bois de Boulogne, he was approached by the Jockey Club to consider a racetrack as part of the park.

Napoleon, who was fond of horse racing, was eager to agree to Morny's plan, realizing that it would bring them closer to the status of Britain and create another public attraction.

The Jockey Club would put their resources towards the racecourse infrastructure, such as the stands, and received a fifty-year lease with annual rent.

The Jockey Club put together races such as the Grand Prix and paid out the rewards to the winning horses, often using money raised by outside sources.

Manet most likely started Longchamp while working on Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe, which may have inspired the painting.

[3] The art historian Juliet Wilson-Bareau notes that this presentation of the horses makes them appear "as if exploding from a distant mass of trees in the background.

[3] The pole with the circle on top marks the race's finish line, which serves an important role for Manet.

Wilson-Bareau comments that "a sweep of green hills high up on the canvas, on the distant horizon, is 'pinned' to the foreground and the picture plane by the circular top of a furlong marker on the track,"[6] reducing the perceived depth of the work.

[3] Manet further manipulates the depth of the work, according to the art historian Françoise Cachin, by creating "an effect analogous to that of a photographer telescoping toward a subject with a zoom lens; the area in focus grows in proportion to the framing edges, and the depth of field decreases.

This man is taken straight from William Powell Frith's The Derby Day, where he appears in the middle of the work holding binoculars.

[3] This building catches the viewer's eye, "emphasizing the flatness of the canvas yet also the sense of speed, recession, and limitless space," according to Wilson-Bareau.

[5] This was the original painting Manet made of Longchamp and is believed to have been submitted by him to an 1865 exhibition hosted by the art dealer Louis Martinet.

Art historian Theodore Reff writes, "although [this painting] shows the most important section of the large composition [Manet] exhibited in 1865, it cannot actually belong to it; it is painted in a more vigorous, sketchy style than the surviving two fragments, and it includes at the lower left two female spectators very close to those shown in one of the fragments."

But Jean Harris claims that this work "must be a further reworking of the right section of the original [1864] painting" done by a "desire for simplification and unification.